Drift Margin
by jinlian
Summary: "We've already lost everything there is to lose, Ranger. So you can plug yourself in and trust just one person in this world, you can stand and fight in the cockpit of a jaeger, or you can wait for the kaiju to chew you up and shit you out." (Legend of Korra/Pacific Rim AU, Mako/Korra)
1. prologue

_When my brother and I were kids, our parents used to wake us up late in the night to look out at the stars. We used to talk about what it would be like up there, looking down below and free of everything but each other—and, of course, as my brother and I had to wonder, whatever other life might be out there, too. _

_We always thought alien life would come from the stars. But as it turned out, we were looking in the wrong direction._ _When alien life entered our world it was from the deep beneath the Pacific Ocean: a fissure between two tectonic plates, a portal between the dimensions. A breach._

_I was eight years old when the first kaiju made land in San Francisco. _ _By the time tanks, jets and missiles took it down, six days and thirty five miles later, three cities were destroyed. Tens of thousands of lives were lost. We mourned our dead, memorialized the attack, moved on. And then, only six months later, a second attack hit Manila_. _ And then the third hit Cabo. Then we learned this was not going to stop. This was just the beginning._

_Something out there had discovered us. They counted on the humans to hide, to give up, to fail; and at first we almost did. They never considered our ability to stand, to endure, that we would rise to the challenge._

_It came from a young lieutenant in the Canadian Forces—a man by the name of Sokka Ota. Nobody wanted to listen at first. In order to fight monsters, he said, we needed monsters of our own. A new weapon. Man linked to a giant machine, able to feel everything it felt. I know—it sounded crazy. Everyone else thought so, too. So at first no one listened. But then we got desperate. _

_The German mechanist who took the task of designing these machines called them_jaegers_: it means "hunter." It didn't start off too well, though. The jaegers were so huge, so complex, that the strain it took on the human brain to stay connected was too much. The whole thing might have been forgotten if it hadn't been for one kid, just a Tibetan Buddhist monk who said that the problem was the idea that everything was individual—that the solution lay within each other. A dual-pilot system: right hemisphere, left hemisphere. Minds and memories melded as one to share the neural load of the jaeger, the self forgotten so that no one had to face the kaiju alone. That kid was in the first jaeger ever to take down a kaiju._

_The Jaeger Program exploded. After the Dragon Dancer, there was the Tundra Boomerang, the Kyoshi Warrior, the Bandit Boar, the Chakra Blue. It wasn't just enough to keep them from finding us, now._ _In the jaegers, we could stop their attacks before they hit hard. We started winning; the jaegers stopped invasions everywhere. But the jaegers were only as good as their pilots, so jaeger pilots turned into rock stars. The danger turned into propaganda, kaijus into toys. We got really good at it—winning._

_Then everything changed._

_Jaegers started falling faster than we could build them. Kaiju were adapting, using better strategy, showing different attacks. We just couldn't keep up. They broke through the coastal walls—smashed city after city and finally, we decided, the only thing left to do was retreat as far as we could go and try to find a place the kaiju couldn't follow. _

_Not the jaegers, though. Everything that was left, it's their job to keep the kaiju out for as long as they could. So the pilots and the jaegers remain on the shoreline. There are lots of people in the world, after all, and they can't go at once. Someone's gotta protect them._

_It's all just temporary, though. Sooner or later, there'll be nothing left to hold them back. And when that day comes… we have no idea what we're gonna do._

* * *

The world for hours has been nothing but fear, of dust and dirt and the screams of people as they ran. Now, though, it is silence, but for the rush of blood in her ears and the heavy rush of breath against the glass that fogs up her vision.

_Breathe._

It's the one word she can remember, and she clings to it, the line to keep her head above the darkness that swims just below her vision. It's the chant she uses to time her ever step, her every swing; it's a command her lungs obey over the promise of rest in the drifting blue. She wants to _live._

She just can't remember why.

_Breathe._

Her body is not her own any more; it is so much more than that. She can feel the uneven surface against her feet despite her steps on cold hard metal, feel the crunch of flesh and bone in her hands though she holds nothing there. And she can feel the ground as it rises to meet her, until her head hits stone and silence turns into blackness.

_"Breathe, Korra—"_

"Korra."

A bare-tipped finger touches her cheek, gently pulling at her lower eyelid, and she jerks, whole body twitching and eyes flying wide. The culprit's hand drops from her face to her shoulder. "It's all right," he says. "Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

She licks her lips and tastes chapped skin and dried blood. "I… yes," she replies as she blinks, squints around the room to make sense of things. The room is pristine, crisp white sheets and pale blue walls, and, most tellingly, the _beep, beep, beep_ of a monitor by her side. She's clearly in a hospital, but she cannot remember what she has done to earn herself a stay.

His gaze is level as he watches her, looking for something, it seems—just for a moment. "Do you know why?"

She lets her attention rest on him: his head perfectly shaved without even a stubble, the full beard that made up for the lack of hair on top, his pressed royal blues, the bronze pins and ribbons along his chest, the winged symbol on his chest. It's a symbol she knows but not one she can place, a symbol that should, she thinks, belong emblazoned on steel, five times her size—_tattooed on arms she raised high above her head, arms that came crashing down on the head that ripped, that tore at her chest, that tried to bring her down, down, down—_

"Because I fought a kaiju," she says, and pain lances through her head so intense that when it fades to a dull throbbing in her skull she cannot keep herself from shaking.

He sits down on her bed, hands curled in his lap as he turns to look her square in the eyes. "Miss Grey, you did more than fight that kaiju. You killed it."

And despite the trembling, she smiles.

"I don't know what happened out there, but I do know this: that was not your jaeger to drive. One of Naga Siren's pilots is still alive, however, and she's told me that she fell unconscious the moment her copilot was killed. That jaeger was down. That means that you entered it on your own, linked with a fallen jaeger on your own, and piloted a victory _on your own."_

She isn't listening. _I'm a pilot,_ is the only thought in her head—the newsreels and cheering crowds of her childhood only the backgrounds. She even owns a pair of Chakra Blue sneakers, somewhere home in her closet.

"You are twelve years old, let alone untrained," he continues, and the knuckles on his hand turn white as he clenches them tighter together. "By all rights you should be dead, but what's done is done, and it doesn't look as though we have a choice."

Cheering—_or was it screaming—people running but the kaiju running faster, and Korra was alone, her parents still, she thought, at work. And worse, she watched the jaeger fall: but when the crowd ran, she went forwards, full of the urge to see and the urge to fight and the urge to__** live.**_

_"Miss Grey."_

She's pulled back to earth by his voice, her breath short in her throat as she twists a shaking hand in her hospital blanket. The ranger stands again; whether he's aware of her lack of attention to him or whether he's simply agitated, she can't tell, but she looks at him straight. "This is a serious matter. I am Marshall Tenzin Gyaltsen of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps, and unfortunately because of your inability to understand _why_ all our pilots go through intense training before they step_foot i_n a jaeger, you are required to make an immediate move to the shatterdome in Anchorage. I've already spoken with your parents, and they understand why this is necessary."

He says it like it's a punishment. "I killed a _kaiju,"_ Korra says through her grin, "and I s_aved lives,_ and you gotta deal with it."

"That is not—!" The Marshall catches himself halfway through his retort, a whirl on the soles of his polished shoes. He swipes a hand over his beard, gave it a tug; with one deep breath, he tries again. "Korra, listen to me."

She does, but she does not stop smiling.

"You plugged yourself into a jaeger alone with an untrained, immature brain. It's a mystery how you survived, but the neural load it took on your body has not gone without consequence." He quiets; Korra's smile slips, just a little. "You will be a ranger candidate, Miss Grey. But you will never be able to take the force of a jaeger on your own again, or you will die."

Death is not a concept Korra has ever seriously had to consider—not any twelve-year-old, really, since the invention of the jaeger. And yet she'd already faced it, before in the cockpit of the Naga Siren and now, as Tenzin stares at her over her hospital bed, grey eyes meeting blue. Still, death is only word; that's all it would ever be.

Tenzin tugs on his beard, once more. "You've already proven you're willing to do something so obviously harebrained," he says, his shoulders drawn together—just slightly. As though an attempt to soften the announcement of Korra's relocation to a shatterdome and inevitable death, or perhaps to drive it home, he adds, "This is for your own protection, more than anything."

And then he is gone, his shoes clicking on the linoleum far down the hallway where she can still hear. Korra takes a breath, deep, and sucks in air between her teeth; she feels her lungs fill and swell before she raises a shaking hand and covers her face. Against the palm of her hand the world is dark, and she can focus on tasting air, on the quiet, persistent beep of the monitor by her side that assures her that her heart is still beating. And yet something feels wrong—not the pain in her head or the limbs she couldn't keep from trembling, but something in her chest, like there's a hollow between her heart and her lungs but she doesn't know what belonged.

She isn't left alone, not for long. A blue-clad nurse enters her room after hearing she's awake to check her memory, that she remembers who she is and where she's from. Her parents come next to hold her close and cry—that they are so happy to see her alive, so proud of what she has done, and Korra hides her face in her father's shoulder and holds on tight because soon they will be gone.

But at the end of it all, only one thought remains in Korra's mind: _she is going to pilot jaegers._


	2. one

Mako's helmet bounces on the gated metal floor and rolls few inches before being kicked by the feet that stand in his line of vision, the view with which he's greeted as he gasps for air and opens his eyes. "What the _hell," _he hears, and he lets his head drop to the floor almost hard enough to bruise.

_"Pilots disengaged."_

Heavy footsteps echo through the cockpit, but Mako remains lying where he is until a hand grabs his shoulder and jerks him upright. Somebody tugs at his eyelid; Mako pushes, rubs a forearm over his face instead. There's a pounding just behind his temples, but otherwise he feels fine—he only doesn't want to be touched, hands cold against his body that begs, as he lies on the ground, for a moment to itself. Mako listens instead, keeps his gaze down and watches feet pace back and forth across the ground loud taps and clunks that reverberate against his skull and in his ears. These are not memories, they tell him. This he can share.

_"What the hell," _he hears again, repeated from further away this time. The voice is louder than necessary in the small space of the cockpit, even above the whirls of machinery and the murmur of the A.I. as it shuts itself down. Mako needs to time to place it. "Did you see what happened? Because I sure didn't. I told you this would—"

"Shut the hell up, Hasook," Mako says loudly, and his mouth is so dry that his voice almost cracks.

He places gloved hands beside him and pushes himself up now, once again shrugging off assistance from the J-Tech officer kneeling beside him. The world is unsteady, a reel of blues and blacks, but he sets his feet and lets the film play.

Hasook hasn't left the cockpit, his helmet dangling from two crooked fingers on his right hand. "I could have been _wiped," _he complains, and just for an instant Mako hears the screech of leather and talon, and he thinks that this way, at least, Hasook would have died without screams on his lips.

"Good thing you weren't, then," Mako mutters instead. He wipes a hand across his mouth, where a copper tang wells against his tongue before being spat onto the ground.

Attempting a neural drift with Hasook had been a pointless exercise, in the end, the rounds run by J-Tech and LOCCENT for no other reason than they _had_ no team for the Basco Thunder. It had been an act of desperation, though, founded on a essential similarity in the drift candidates: memories of rings of people, fists wrapped in white tape dirtied with mud and blood and coins tossed in bets at their feet—a fighting style only one other candidate shared.

Desperation, however, did not guarantee compatibility.

The J-Tech officers shuffle them out of the cockpit before any retort can be made, and Mako gazes over the heads of technicians bent over equipment, over the LOCCENT officer that grips his arm and the medic that rushes towards them. No rangers, he notes; and with that, a pocket of air released from his lungs, he deflates. Hasook has stopped talking, at least for the moment, resigned to a sullen turn of his lips and arms crossed over his chest as the medic gives him attention.

"Where is the marshal?" Mako asks.

"Communications." A technician fumbles with his drivesuit. "You're to report immediately."

* * *

Marshal Toza Bogdanovic is a man permanently bent by his own muscles, built and scarred under the weight of metal and the world. Mako is more than a foot taller, but in the presence of a man who does not know how to rest, even long after his body has grown too old to bear the pressure, he stops and listens. It's easier to stare at the water-damaged spots along the wall or the cracks in the concrete floor of the marshal's bunker than to look, really, at the pinched scowl on the old man's face.

"This is getting ridiculous, Iwamoto, and you know it."

Mako doesn't respond. There is no correct answer, so he doesn't try at all.

"You knew that was a shot in the dark, a drift that would never come to shore. I let you do it because you're the best damn candidate we have, but you know of all the harebrained decisions when we have another person who matches all the tests, all the requirements—and don't you start your protesting, son, I don't know what your problem is—" Toza taps a finger against his head and leans in, only inches away from Mako's face so that Mako can count the lines in the old marshall's eyes—"but we need_talent_ right now, and _you_ need to get over it. Your brother's doing everything he can."

And there, it's said. Mako can feel the muscles in his back seizing but he only stiffens more, pulls his gaze away from Toza's to the dank concrete floors, the faint prints of his boots wet from the rain still visible in the dim light of the swinging overhead lamp.

Toza sighs and takes a step back. "I don't have a choice, Iwamoto. There's nothing left for you in Tokyo. You'll never get in a jaeger here."

Mako looks up now, a chill running down his back—a trace along the neural interface that ghosts over his skin from the circuitry suit removed less than an hour ago. "Sir, you—"

The marshal raises his hand. "Panama City's been truly lost, one jaeger down and the other completely destroyed. Technicians and rangers are being relocated to Hong Kong while the jaeger that remains is moved for repairs. Hong Kong has the strongest defense line, overseen by Grand Marshal Gyaltsen, they're lowering the wall for new incomers. It's just good timing. You need to _go_. I've already made the decision: you and your brother are flying out at 0600 tomorrow morning."

Mako feels a breath catch in his throat; he can't swallow, and he can't let it go. "Bolin's coming, too, then?"

"Of course, you fuckin' idiot." Toza turns, makes a heavy drop into a chair as though something has pushed him down. He tilts his head back, eyes half-shut but trained, still, on the boy before him. "Now get out of here. Maybe Gyaltsen will be able to knock some sense into you."

Since the first kaiju landing nearly fourteen years earlier, rain has become the pan-Pacific standard weather—some effect of the so-called "Kaiju Blue" phenomenon, perhaps, or, according to the more superstitious, earth's cry for the future. Mako thinks it fitting as he rests his forehead against the cool glass of the helicopter window and watches the wide expanse of ocean roll beneath them. Bolin sleeps, his head tucked against his chest, and the Hong Kong skyline grows closer ahead; but Mako keeps his gaze below. The sea is not quiet, smooth nowhere he can see from horizons across, but nor does it toss and roar. It rumbles, prowls, disturbed only by the pounding rain, and he wonders just what waits beneath the surface. Would they know it was coming if monsters from their dreams and memories rose to greet them?

It is, as it turns out, a question with blessedly no answer. The grey waters below only roll over beneath them to give way to the expanse of blacktop and crowded umbrellas below. Mako leans over and nudges his brother's shoulder as the helicopter hovers and slowly drops. Bolin lets out a low groan, shifts and throws an arm over his eyes.

"Bro," Mako says, "wake up. We're here."

Bolin jerks upright, and both unclip their belts and shrug canvas backpacks over their shoulders, all they need to carry their belongings in a move from one country to another. "It's bigger than the one in Tokyo," Bolin shouts over the helicopter blades as they power down, and he steps out into the weather.

The hangar is full of people running: some attempting to push box-laden carts twice their size, some with coat jackets held over their heads, others with umbrellas who race for closing double doors, but all around is a sense of people's fleeing. Only one slows amidst the rush, boots splashing through the puddles as she turns her collar up against her face.

"She's gorgeous," says Bolin—no quieter than his last shout—and she comes to a halt in front of the copter and smiles.

"You must be the Iwamoto brothers," she says in Japanese, and she holds out a hand that takes Mako a moment to realize he's supposed to take. "I'm Asami Sato, of J-Tech. I'll be showing you around."

Her eyes are green, a single flash of color against the drear of the hangar and the rain.

Mako listens, only half-heartedly, as she leads them inside the high concrete walls and points out places or names: the combat room that way, tanks on their way to K-Science, rangers on their ways to and from training. Bolin keeps up at her side, an animated receiver to her every word, and Asami listens and laughs; Mako watches, instead, the tumble of her black curls, keeps his eyes on the heels of her shoes and the tracks of the floor they walk.

He looks up only when the doors slide open to a room at least twice as large as what Mako thought encaptured the whole shatterdome from the outside. All the people fleeing from the docks must have come here, he thinks; he nearly trips three times as people shove and hustle through the crowds, and when Mako looks to his left, he nearly stops dead at the jaeger that rises, menacing, above the room.

"The marshal is that way." Asami is pointing, and Mako cranes his head to see. "I have to meet my father to inspect a new shipment from the inland, but if you need anything, you can usually find me in the control room or in Kwoon Combat." She leans back on her heels, twists her hair over her shoulders with a quirk of her mouth. "I'm not a pilot, but Dad likes to make sure I'm still sharp, no matter what."

Bolin is slicking his hair back and waving goodbye when he gives Mako a huge, hard elbow the the chest. Mako doubles over, wraps his arms around his stomach—"Bro, what the—?"—but Bolin is already hurrying forward, dragging Mako behind him.

"That's not Korra Grey, is it?" he asks, and Mako finally sees what he thinks he's supposed to see.

The Grand Marshal is even taller than Mako, who stands just over six feet, and with his shaved head and PPDC blues cuts an intimidating figure. Next to him, though, is someone much smaller, her hair pulled back and dog tags swinging as she gestures something emphatic. Hers _is_ a recognized face, Mako realizes with some shock—one he's seen on television, even years before, blue eyes against brown skin and arms that look as though they alone could hold back a kaiju's claw.

_A child who crawled into a jaeger—_

The conversation does not seem to be a pleasant one. The marshal's face is almost a purple against the pale of his skin, and Mako can hear the end of the argument in English as they approach.

"—else here even comes close to what I can do and have done, you can't tell me I need—"

"Korra, we are not having this discussion right now!" Marshal Gyaltsen cuts her off over the rest of the crowd that hustle by, and she opens her mouth to protest. "In fact, we're not having it at all. My decision is final, and you _will listen."_

She clenches her fists and continues to glare at Gyaltsen even when he notices Mako and Bolin and turns to greet them; Mako keeps his eyes on her instead of the marshal, too, as she makes no indication of drawing to attention at their arrival. "Misters Iwamoto," Gyaltsen says, and he dips his head briefly in response to the brothers' short bows. "Welcome to Hong Kong. Walk with me."

He takes over where Asami left, polished shoes clicking against the hangar bay floor. Mako looks over his shoulder, and Korra follows, sullen, her arms crossed over her chest as she kicks her feet while she walks. "I'm sure Marshal Bogdanovic led you to no false expectations about your move here. While we have jaegers in repair you're to continue training under my officers and await assignments. Japan is nearly an empty island; Hong Kong is a very different story. It won't be what you're used to."

Korra perks up for the first time at that, taking two quick steps to close the gap between herself and the group. "I'll make sure they know what to expect," she offers, a lilt in her voice as she raises one eyebrow and lifts her chin. "It'll be easy enough to lead them through orientation before we turn them over to Beifong."

"Ranger Grey." Tenzin stops and turns, almost spinning on his heels, and Mako notes the change in address. Korra seems to notice it as well, as she straightens in response, drawing her shoulders back and dropping her arms. "With two of our jaegers in repair and in need of new pilots, Iwamoto and Iwamoto here are going to be joining you in returning to drift training in addition to physical. I think you'll all agree you're set in that department, as long as you stay on top of it, but youparticularly—" His gaze shifts briefly from Korra to Mako—"could use the training."

"But after _five—!"_

It sounds like the beginning of a much-repeated argument, and Tenzin seems to think so, too, as he begins walking again before Korra can finish. "If you can sustain a connection without putting any lives in danger, then we'll have this conversation again, Ranger."

Something tenses in Korra's face, a blanch in her eyes and a twist of her lips. There's a piece missing, Mako thinks, that he should know, and he strains to remember the newsreels, the interviews, the fallen jaegers and humanity pushed to the brink; but he can only remember the blink of blue eyes and a tiny figure against the backdrop of a monster.

"Breakfast is served at 0530…"

Once again Mako turns off one ear and leans back against the flow of movement and information, the passing of time before his eyes. Bolin walks by Tenzin's side with a question for everything, and Korra—a set to her jaw and a gaze that never settles, as though searching for a place to jump—vanishes into the hangar crowd. But Mako settles back in his memories, dim television screens and looming bodies.

And when they leave the noise of hangar bay into the close, bare walls of the bunker wing, his body lets it go.


End file.
